Granite State Times

New Hampshire recently discovered potential cybersecurity threats from a criminal organization overseas, resulting in rising concerns about the state's effort, or lack thereof, to protect its cyber business operations, according to New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR).

“ISA Cyber News Aug. 30: Revenge motive behind massive T-Mobile breach? Microsoft patches serious, months-old vulnerability in Azure; New Hampshire town loses $2.3M in email scam,” the ISA Cybersecurity said in an Aug. 30 Tweet.

The coordinated attacks have targeted local towns, taking advantage of their vulnerability, a situation made worse by the lack of urgency to allocate money and staff to resolve these issues, according to SentinelSource.com.

The town of Peterborough was robbed of $2.3 million in taxpayer money after falling victim to two cyber attacks, NHPR reports. According to SentinelSource.com, a town staff member was tricked by a business email compromise, carried out by a person using a fake email account to "pose as a known vendor or contact and make a seemingly legitimate request."

“These are wide-net attacks. In a lot of cases, they're not looking for any one town,” Jason Sgro, a cyber security specialist at The Atom Group in Portsmouth, told NHPR. “They are casting a wide net, going after a big group of organizations. And whoever they trick, that's who they're working with. And it is important to note that these are not organizations that are targeting you because they have a specific grudge against the town of Peterborough or somebody else."

The attacks were once easily identifiable through grammar analysis, as many fraudulent messages were written by non-native English speakers, but the attackers have now become more sophisticated, making it harder to detect them, NHPR reports. Sgro said that the state of New Hampshire hasn’t made significant investments in fixing these issues, but he insists that it needs to address this issue sooner rather than later, before more money is lost that isn't recoverable.